This is the first article in an occasional series on publicly traded companies in the online commerce sector including the large internet retailers. The goal is to provide you with “deep background” info from the perspective of a seller who actually sells products on the site or, in the case of Omniture [[OMTR]], uses the web analytics software to increase online sales. I will not be making a buy or sell recommendation for the companies, but I am happy to answer any questions you have about the company and service.

Omniture provides online business software, including Web Analytics, to nearly 60 percent of the top 50 Internet retailers. Omniture customers include some very well known names such as Ebay, Sony, Thomas Cook, Vodafone, Sephora beauty products, Neiman Marcus, Walmart, eToys, Burpee Seeds, The Finish Line, etc. Nearly 1000 online retailers total use Omniture services. Growth over the last several years has been excellent, and earlier this year OMTR completed the acquisition of it’s only meaningful competitor (VSCN) in this area. That’s right, growth plus steady monthly subscription fees for services plus no real competitor! What’s absolutely amazing to me as a user is that OMTR has not yet been bought out by a mega-cap company like Ebay or Microsoft. Who knows, maybe they have tried, it sure seems like it would be a great fit for Ebay.

Web Analystics is software that is designed to feed various types of meaningful marketing data to a seller in an easily understood format that helps the seller decide how to fine tune the presentation of their products to sell more items faster. The basic Omniture service comes bundled with my monthly subscription fee for the basic Ebay store. It may be basic but it’s incredibly useful and quickly gives me data that I would not be able to easily collect myself.

For example, one of the main metrics it gives me is a breakdown of traffic to my store… how many people came to my store, the number of page views, daily unique visitors (a “visit” is defined as spending at least 30 minutes viewing pages of ads in my store), and number of unique views of each item for sale. It can give me this data over the last day, week, month or year, and compare time periods. It can also tell me the source of the visitors (Ebay, Google, other website) and the search terms used to find my items (extremely important for merchandising).

Let’s say I have two attractive blue art glass decorative bowls to sell, both exactly the same. I could experiment with two different ad titles and see which ad title gets more people to click through and view the bowl, and how many views I needed to have before it sold. The first ad I might use the title “Pretty Blue Art Glass Bowl 12 inches across”. The second ad for the same bowl might say: “Large Signed Studio Art Glass Blue Bowl dramatic”. Omniture will tell me that for every ten people who view the first ad, fifty people will view the second ad, and result in a quicker sale for me. This is a big difference and will change how I write ad titles in the future to increase sell-through rate.

Omniture will also tell me if a buyer is searching for a “black jacket” or a “blue jacket” this season on Ebay,or Wedgewood china vs Royal Worcester china. What I list for sale and when, at which price, what phrases to use, what brands to buy for resale… OMTR helps me to make those decisions effectively.

It’s unusual for me to have such high praise for anything related to online selling, as you will no doubt become aware in my articles to follow. The sellers tend to know where all the warts are or holes in the services. However, Omniture has given me more effective help in selling than any service or metric available to me on any of my online selling sites.

None of my remarks is related to the stock price, valuation or fundamentals, I happen to be long OMTR for the long term because I believe it will either become a much bigger player or get bought out. Obviously I’m biased, please make your own assessment on whether or not to invest.

Let me know if I can help with any further information. Cheers, hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend.